Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is right about Springfield. This was done well ahead of schedule and it is a very important piece of infrastructure that will protect a lot of houses down there. Cloonlara was one of those places that was synonymous with the terrible winter floods every year. The scheme is more or less complete. We hope to hand it over to Clare County Council early in the spring, as we did with the Ennis scheme. There are three schemes in Ennis now protecting thousands of houses in the largest town in Munster. The town has been transformed by it. There are other places in County Clare as well.

With regard to the drainage Act, the reality is the Arterial Drainage Act was developed for a different country at a different time. It had an agricultural element as its main basis, which was a very good idea at the time to help those parts of the country with particular soil types to be adequately drained so they could be tilled. There was logic in it at the time. As a result of that, the Office of Public Works became responsible for the management and maintenance of the channels. The local authorities have statutory responsibility for the rest. I have met all the local authorities at this stage, more or less and unfortunately, for one reason or another, they do not do it.

Historically, they did and gradually over a period, the practice evaporated. Now, if Clare County Council are putting down €80,000 for district drainage then that is €80,000 more than some local authorities are putting down because some of them are not putting down anything at all because they want it all done for them. In the normal course of events that is not really practical.

I have engaged with the local authorities, through the Office of Public Works, on this matter. We have already spent in excess of almost €70 million on minor works, which are houses in rural parts of County Clare and wherever else that are at risk of flooding from a lot of these channels that are not being properly maintained. The local authorities can come through with an application that includes the environmental impact assessment of what it is that they propose to do on the river, which we will fund. We encourage them to do more of that.

On the maintenance of channels, like ourselves, local authorities must undertake environmental studies for everything they want to do to maintain a channel. You cannot take a chainsaw out on to a river any more, as was possible a couple of years ago because you are not cutting a tree anymore but a habitat. It is not possible and if you did it, you would have your backside inside in the High Court faster than you can say Jack Spratt. That is the reality and a lot of local authorities do not have to capacity to deal with this work, so they rely on us.

We are primarily focused on the protection of properties and businesses and if that can be achieved in the short term through minor works. We are interested, potentially, in lifting the thresholds around minor works and doing more smaller elements of minor works, up to the threshold of €750,000, which we currently are increasing to take them up to a higher level.

We also encourage executive engineers at a local level in local council offices to first become aware of the scheme. Members would be surprised at how many of them have a low level of awareness. They lack the preparedness of the OPW to assist them in how they go about the applications, though not actually do the application for them, and then in the delivery of the scheme, whether it is either through direct labour with the council themselves or by way of contractor that they would have on a procurement framework.

On Clare Abbey, unfortunately yahoos have entered a number of sites and done damage such as emblazon the surface with graffiti that says so and so "waz here", which shows a really clever lad. These people scrape their names into something that could be thousands of years old.